Adebola Journal 4
Meeting with Yewande The room was sweltering hot, ripe with the stench of too many unwashed bodies. The little murmurs, rustlings and whispers of women and children scratching and shifting their bodies on the dusty floor failed to distract the dwarf sitting in the center of the half-circle. She spoke with her eyes closed, as if her spirit was in a different, purer place. Her face had a serenity beyond her years. She was the youngest woman in the room, but the older women watched and listened as if they were thirsty for what she said. She was telling an old story, so familiar to her listeners that they could not tell where they heard it first. Her voice had a dry, musing cadence that they had to strain to hear clearly. Afik was very proud and possessive of his wife. That is, he would allow no other man to speak with her, and even boy-children were suspect. When she went to fetch water, he followed close behind her. If she went to the market to buy bread, he could be seen looking over sandals in the nearby stall. A woman in a brown dress hushed the wailing child squirming in her lap. Villagers mocked him for this and laughed at his wife behind her back, that they should be so chained together. As a jest, the village chief proposed a wager, a thousand naira to the man who stole a kiss from her without Afik stopping him. Another man, Musa, wanted the reward and so thought of a clever scheme, to trick Afik. He tucked gold inside a plantain and pretended to discover it when Afik was near. “''Ah me," cried the deceitful man. "How can anyone eat such lousy plantains?"'' The dwarf’s voice went deep and dramatic, drawing a chuckle from the women around her. She continued: Afik saw the gold and greed grew in his heart. He begged Musa to tell him where to find the tree which grew such terrible plantains, intending to take all the fruit for himself. So Musa, Afik and Afik’s wife went to the tall tree. Afik used a ladder to climb to the top (he had come well prepared) leaving Musa and his wife at the foot of the tree. Musa knocked over the ladder and kissed Afik’s wife, mocking Afik for his foolishness. Then he went away, back to the village to claim his reward, laughing over his success. Afik’s wife set the ladder so her husband could get down. But the ladder was not stable. Afik slipped and fell from the tree, landing on his wife and killing her instantly. '' ''The old story bids us to consider: who was responsible for the death of Afik’s wife? The village chief who proposed the wager? Musa who greedily accepted it? Or Afik who was so possessive in the first place? So tell me, my dears: who is responsible for her death? The room was utterly silent as the woman looked down or at each other, considering the question. The dilemma story was old to them and they all thought they knew an answer. One woman in an orange headscarf said, “The chief, because he only wanted to stir up trouble. Everyone else wanted something good.” Another with a bruise almost hidden by her head scarf retorted, “But if Afik was not so jealous in the first place, nothing would have gone wrong. Who can work with a husband watching her all the time?” A little girl near the front said shyly, “Musa is to blame. His greed made him do what he knew was wrong, shaming Afik and his wife.” After some discussion, the dwarf stirred and opened her large dark eyes. “These are all good answers, true to our people’s traditions. All of them contributed to her death. But there is one person who really is to blame, who nobody even names. How can we forget her? Afik’s wife herself, who set the ladder so poorly, who surely must be responsible for her own life. She did not cause the wager, she can not control the jealousy of one man or the whims of another or the lips of a third, but she could be sure to set the ladder well.” The dwarf rose slowly to her feet, her voice growing thick and powerful, strong and warm as the sun. “We are raised to believe we are like Afik’s wife; nameless and powerless. But to survive, we must be powerful enough, wise enough, and brave enough to turn away those who would do us harm, to set our ladders well, to return love with love and evil with a show of power so that those who want to harm us will never do it again. To speak our own names and not hide behind those of men, even men who love us. If we want to claim power in our city and our homes, we also must claim responsibility for our actions, whether for good or ill.” As she spoke, she met the eyes of each of her listeners, not missing the stocky ork in the back who had come in halfway through the story. Some of her listeners smiled to themselves doubtfully, while others lowered their eyes considering the lesson. A pair of elderly grandmothers started bickering. Yewande herself nodded briefly at the ork at the back and drifted into the room behind her. Several minutes passed before the ork followed her. Yewande met her with a smile. "Ah, come in and sit with me. Would you like some tea?” The ork burst out, “What were you thinking, giving me that stupid idol? I’m not a mage! Did you think I’d have the faintest clue what to do with the bloody thing? I could have destroyed the city! Or worse, from what the extraterrestrial was saying, let an army of… something out of wherever they are. Next time, find someone else!” She flung a cloth-wrapped package down on the table and turned to storm out. Yewande had settled herself calmly into her chair with a steaming cup. “Do you think I had anyone else to send?” Adebola gestured sharply to the door. “You’ve got hundreds of devoted followers. There’s got to be some witch or sorceress, someone who knows which end of a spell goes up. If spells even have an up and down.” “Please sit down, Adebola.” There was a long silence as the ork struggled between her politeness and her anger. She slumped down into a chair, glaring. “Did you hear my story?” Yewande asked gently. “Folk tales. I don’t care about all that. Just promise me you won’t do that to me again and I’ll keep helping you.” “Tell me, Adebola. What do you think would happen if everyone who was asked to do something important said ‘I’ll do this thing but not that other thing, the really important one.’? We don’t always get a choice about what tasks we have put in front of us. Some hard jobs choose the person who must do them.” The ork was frowning fiercely. “I don’t understand you.” Yewande stretched in her chair as if her back ached. “When you were a little girl, you worked hard to survive.” Adebola interrupted her. “I still work hard!” The dwarf nodded, her beaded necklaces clinking softly. “Working hard for you wasn’t enough. Someone else helped you a great deal, someone who didn’t have to for any good reason, someone who wouldn’t have ever considered you part of his job or experience. You remember?” Adebola nodded cautiously, as if she expected a trap but couldn’t see it. “He did things he didn’t know how to do because you needed him. He could have tried to pass the job off to someone else, but he accepted both the responsibility and the power to do something good.” The ork’s lips were twisting bitterly. “So I have to repay that? I spend all this time hunting down things for the clinic, I spend time helping him as much as I can, I helped you when you asked me to…” The dwarf was shaking her head. “My point isn’t that there is a debt. That is between you and him, or between you and your good spirits. My point is that we sometimes must do things that we aren’t prepared for, that any woman, any person rather, sometimes faces expectations that perhaps nobody should face. I’m not talking about the challenge you just faced, but other things, the unexpected things that show a person who she really is.” The dwarf seemed overcome by a wave of weariness for a moment, and leaned back in the chair, her eyes closed. Silence stretched between her and the ork perched on the edge of her chair, frowning in thought When Yewande spoke again, the ork glanced up at her intense face and away towards the open book on the table nearby. It was as indecipherable to her as the dwarf was. “I was not always as I am now,” the dwarf continued softly, meeting Adebola’s eyes. “It wasn’t that long ago that I faced challenges that I did not expect to face, that I raged about in my heart. But I can also tell you, no matter how bad those evil times were, I wouldn’t change them: I know myself better now than I did, and what I can do now grows as naturally out of those rotting places as a yam grows from rich soil. Your friend faced similar challenges in his past, which lead him to helping you. Challenges that I believe he still does not understand.” Adebola’s voice was plaintive. “I don’t understand either.” The dwarf favored her with a warm smile. “I expect you will sometime, Adebola.” Her eyes turned towards the book in front of her chair. Adebola took this as a dismissal and left, muttering to herself about people who can’t ever say what they mean so a person can understand it. She missed the slight smile on Yewande’s face. When Adebola got home, she went to her workshop to vent her confusion to the hologram of Worf. Expecting sympathy, she was more than a little taken aback to hear him reply, “''qoH vuvbe' SuS''” in his deep voice. She translated it from Klingon automatically as, “The wind does not respect a fool.” “Oh, you’re no help,” she replied impatiently. But he had already shut himself down.